Van Pick-Up

Tomorrow I'll try to head down to Southampton and pick up our wayward van.

I've got the Single Vehicle Assessment (SVA) appointment scheduled, which is a necessary inspection for all left-hand drive vehicles in the UK, and purportedly you're allowed to drive a foreign-registered vehicle within the UK from the port-of-arrival to the SVA test. I'm also paid-up for one year's auto insurance through Swindon, and have been reading up on the local "rules of the road", so hopefully the journey back will be as uneventful as possible!

As far as getting down to Southampton, it looks like there are frequent trains running between there and Reading. It's a snap to get to Reading from Maidenhead, so ideally I should be able to get down there in maybe 90 for £15 or so. We'll see how it goes!

Cars Ahoy

It doesn't look like an alien spacecraft, does it?

Still, you'd think it must be from the reception it receives from U.K. auto insurers.

Like America, there are dozens of companies more than happy to sell you a car insurance policy. And all of them have curiously-similar online quote request websites, where they walk you through page after page of questions about yourself, your driving history, your spouse / other drivers, etc...and then at the very end, they ask for the make & model of the car. And then they uniformly barf, because apparently there is no such vehicle as a "Ford Freestar" registered anywhere in the known universe. "Are you sure it's not a FreeStyle?" one agent helpfully suggested.

It was enough to make me re-check the title and make sure I hadn't misremembered the name. But no, there it is in black and white. While there are all manner of foreign cars visible tooling around greater London (including a fair number of Ford minivans), apparently most of them belong to families with an established "Mutual Recognition Certificate" establishing UK equivalence. Once you step outside of the "pre-approved catalogue", you might as well be trying to license a moon-lander; and insurance companies, as you may have heard, do not like to take on unassessed risks! Therefore, "sorry, we're not able to offer a policy on that vehicle type at the present time..."

Does this just mean that I've been trying run-of-the-mill domestic policies, and need to enlarge my horizons a bit to cover imports? Not really -- I got rebuffed from Adrian Flux, an "import specialist" that claims to specialize in covering outmarket American cars!

Anyway, we finally got a usable quote from Swinton, and will hopefully get a competitive bid tomorrow from Hyperformance. I can't say that reviews of either company really fill me with confidence, but I don't seem to have a lot of options here. (Apparently our choices will widen somewhat after we exchange our US driver's licenses for full UK permits; I knew we had a year to do that, so hadn't fast-tracked it earlier, a possible mistake.)

To backtrack a bit, we got a letter in the mail this weekend that our van was due to be delivered at the dock in Southampton next Monday (Jan 19), so I (admittedly belatedly) started trying to figure out what I needed to do to pick it up and make it road-worthy. We'd been told (and visually seen) that many people import left-handed drive vehicles to the UK from America, France, Germany, etc, so didn't expect this to be a huge hassle.

However, as is ever the case in such things, there are a number of potential Catch-22's in the process, so sequence is everything. It appears that this is the basic process we will need to undertake:

(1) order an "import pack" from the DVLA

(2) get insurance before the vehicle arrives; two sources recommended CallConnection, a free service in which you explain your situation, and they recommend insurers who meet your needs

(3) using the forms and information contained in the import pack, assemble the following application:

• a completed V55/5 form (something like this)
• your insurance certificate, obtained in step #2
• proof of identity, e.g. passport
• proof of residency, e.g. UK phone or utility bill
• cheque for £55 payable to DVLA Swansea
• US car title
• shipping invoice, e.g. from 2wglobal.com
• (a Certificate of Conformity would go here, but Freestars don't have one)
• (a Mutual Recognition Certificate would go here...)
• a completed C104A from HM Revenue & Customs (Excise)
• a MOT (Ministry of Transport) certificate, which in our case will need to be an SVA (Single Vehicle Approval), performed by VOSA (Vehicle and Operator Services Agency).

That last bullet will be the interesting one. VOSA only has a dozen sites around England, but one is pretty close, while another is right there in Southampton (near the docks, one would assume). I wrote to VOSA to see what would be involved in getting the vehicle from the dock to the Southampton facility, if we need an appointment, etc.

Note that the DVLA has a turnaround time of 7-10 days to process a registration application and send you a tax disc, so we probably won't get to actually drive our van until sometime next month. That somewhat begs the question as to how we're supposed to get it from the docks, to the inspection, to our home; it's possible that hiring a lorry or a tow-truck may be involved :-( Alternately, we could probably rent storage for it down in Southampton for the duration, so I need to see what that might cost.

Finally, even after your tax disc arrives, you don't get your official registration certificate for another few weeks; I'm assuming that you're able to drive without having the official registration in-hand, but that's another thing we'll have to look into :-(

Towards the day when we finally do get to sit in the driver's seat, I picked up a copy of this on the way to work, and it seems very nicely done:

THANK YOU

This morning the four of us finally arrived in the UK, and are set to begin this grand adventure which arguably entered planning as early as 2005. However, before we lift our gaze to the bright and exciting vista before us, we need to take a long and appreciative look at the long and convoluted path which got us here.

In particular, we wish to send a sincere and heartfelt "shout out" to the many friends, family, co-workers, and often complete strangers who carried and supported us so far down that road. To put it bluntly, this proved a mammoth undertaking with intertwined complexities far beyond anything we had initially scoped, and to which our own meager resources would have quickly proved disastrously and ludicrously inadequate. Like King Yertle of yore, we gained this rare clime upon the backs of dozens of willing, self-sacrificial supporters who gave freely of their time and energy to push us over each of the interminable obstacles that cropped up to block our way.

I would especially like to thank the following friends, without whom we could never have achieved this long-sought goal:

• Stacey Jones of the Capital University Registrar's office, who flexibly fielded some decidedly odd verification requests from the UK;
• Emily Roebke of our credit union, who risked carpel tunnel by tirelessly signing her way through reams of evidentiary bank statements;
• Becky Hopper, Cliff Willis, Scott Nix, and Doug Esham of General Dynamics, who wrestled willingly with contentious corporate policies in order to generate the documentation required by the UK Home Office;
• Ashley Flemming of fastUKpermit, who saved me from my own laziness by making me re-sign and re-scan every document again...and again...and again, until each was perfect :-)
• Rachel Siegel of Intercontinental Visa Service, who helped get our entry clearance visas turned-around in record time;
• Evelith Garcia, Suzanne Rummel, Tom Phelps, and the sixth-grade team of Narcoossee Community School, as well as the many teachers who contributed texts and resources for our "home schooling" experiment;
• Natalie Leask of Sterling Relocation for helping with our Maidenhead housing search;
  
• Cristina Santiago of DAS Auto Shippers for helping to get our van overseas;
• Tracey Kinsella, Hannah Welsh, and Kim Anderson of Amazon for helping with my relocation and hiring details;
• Viola Bernatovic of BridgeStreet for helping to arrange our temporary housing in Maidenhead;
  
• Doctors Ahmed and Quinonez for helping to pull together patient records for overseas delivery;
  

And most especially:

• Elisa Guillermo-Portillo, who helped coordinate all aspects of the relocation from Graebel, graciously saving us from own ignorance;
  
• Pamela Norring, who has helped send countless Amazonians on missions throughout the world, sharing her broad experience in international transfers, sympathizing with the many unexpected frustrations incurred, and providing a gratifying well of resiliance and determination to succeed;
• Ben Ellis and Nic Rutterford of Amazon.co.uk, for being willing to take on (and realize) considerable schedule risk in order to accommodate the meandering timetableof a wayward Yank who could never quite determine when he might manage to report to work;
• our friends John, Lara, and Harry Zielinsky, who accepted a new canine companion into their household to the considerable relief of our boys; and finally,
  
• my parents Pete & Judy Zieg, who helped refine our relocation plans by constructively criticizing them with such passion that you almost felt they wanted us to fail :-), yet nonetheless allowed us to crash in their house for a week after our own home had been packed and released to the renters.

This has been a collective effort from start to finish, and we sincerely thank all those who helped to make it happen!

Tier-1 Visas

So it took something like five months to get my HSMP work permit (one month of documentation-gathering, followed by four months of processing by the Home Office). I had honestly thought that, once the work permit was in hand, all the risky (and costly) approvals would be in place.

Little did I realize that the entry clearance visa can be nearly as complicated to obtain, and surprisingly more expensive! While only the family "wage-earner" requires a work permit (which conveniently authorizes the dependent spouse and children to work as well), every family member requires their own entry clearance visa.

Oddly, many of the documentation requirements already established by the work permit application have to be repeated for the visas; fortunately, such overlap means that most of the hard work is already done, although financial records may need updated with current statements. We were fortunate that my employer was willing to help expedite the processing turnaround, which was then completed within just a couple of days.

Anyway, not a major obstacle, just one we hadn't fully appreciated and accounted for in our initial planning -- so be sure to research it in full if you plan to attempt something similar :-) Note that to obtain your visas, you'll need to FedEx your original passports the responsible consulate along with your application -- a somewhat nervous procedure.

Also, I'm unsure of how the appropriate consulate is determined -- the visa4uk.fco.gov.uk website somehow "decided" that ours was to be issued via Chicago (vs Los Angelas, which we had been led to expect), so pay close attention to where your application needs to be submitted. Also note that the "estimated" date of arrival in the UK ends up being an enforced minimum, so estimate an early date versus a later one if you expect your schedule may change.

Finally, note that any errors in the application process can cause your application to be rejected without reimbursement -- a potentially hefty sum if multiple family members are involved -- so it may be worth retaining a service to make sure everything goes right the first time.

HSMP Approved!

Well, it took a little longer than we'd hoped, but (kind of like having a baby), once it's here, you forget all the doubts and worries, and you're just happy to have it :-) For the record, we submitted our HSMP application Jun 16, 2008, and received our letter of approval Oct 6, 2008, a turnaround of exactly 16 weeks.

HSMP Shenanigans

The first time we attempted relocation to the UK (Nov 2007), we thought perhaps we could skip some of the paperwork obstacles by looking for a company willing and able to "sponsor" us with a work permit. Well, that didn't work out too well, and it's probably just as well: requiring employer sponsorship adds costs to the hiring company (which they're probably going to take right back out of your salary), greatly limits the range of employers willing to consider you in the first place, and ties you irrevocably to a single employer. Not really a great combination.

Therefore, on our second attempt (May 2008), we "bit the bullet" and applied directly through the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP). This has some annoyingly rigorous documentation requirements, and some hefty up-front fees, but (if approved) provides "free-agent" status for the main wage earner to move between jobs freely during the initial 2yr period. More importantly, by obtaining your "own" work permit status, this frees employers from considerable cost and risk, and opens up a much broader selection of possible employment.

Note that the original HSMP program has now been closed (as of June 30, 2008), but you can still apply through the very-similar Tier-1 (General) program. I haven't researched the new Tier-1 requirements, but I'm told they're comparable to the now-defunct HSMP, so I'll speak to those in hopes they will still apply.

First of all, the most important goal of HSMP is to verify your wage-earning power. They like at least two, or preferably three or four, corroborating sources of official evidence to support your salary claims, so plan to provide ORIGINAL pay stubs, and bank statements, and W-2 tax forms, and letters from HR verifying your salary and pay history. All of these should be on original fraud-prevention security paper, using watermarks, microprinting, holograms, etc.

They'll want at least a year's worth of continuous evidence, so start now, saving every financial document that comes your way, for the next 14+ months. (Obviously, you should have been doing that anyway, "in case" of an unlikely IRS audit, but if you plan relocation to Europe, you'll have to produce the entirety of such documents, so get out a shoebox and start the collection now!)

Now, what happens if you lose a pay stub or bank statement or two? Do you have to start everything over? No, not necessarily, but it will require some extra work on your part to make up for the loss. You'll need "official" reprints from your company or your bank, and those reprints will need to be marked in a variety of ways to convince the Home Office inspectors. Generally, each should be reprinted on stock letterhead, then signed and dated by a company officer, then impressed with any seals or stamps that might be handy (ink or embossed). It wouldn't hurt to staple a business card from the signing official. Note that these signatures, stamps and seals need to be applied to every single page -- not just the first "page 1 of 3", etc. Even after all this work, the Home Office may take 12 weeks to review your application, and then reject it as insufficiently documented -- costing you a hefty non-refundable fee, and three months in your relocation schedule.

How to mitigate that risk? If you can afford it (and you really shouldn't be looking at relocation without a reasonable set-aside of liquid cash), I recommend retaining one of the many UK Immigration Specialists who will rigorously pre-review your application materials with a critical eye, making you re-do the whole thing repeatedly until you meet their high standards. This is good, because by the time you satisfy them, you'll be virtually guaranteed to pass the Home Office requirements. Being an American with a typically ingrained capitalistic faith in the motivating power of greed, I recommend immigration specialists offering "no-win no-fee" contracts, such that they only get paid if you get approved.

I ended up using FastUKPermit.com, and I was extremely pleased with their high quality of service, reliable communication, and overall diligence. They were on the low end of the price quotes I requested (still not cheap, but still just a fraction of the cost of the overall move), and were personably professional and cordially competent throughout.

Note that it will facilitate communication if, on your end, you have access to a scanner. That way, you can scan each and every document for remote review by their legal team, which saves considerable time over repeat iterations. (Fewer iterations if you actually follow their directions..."sign every page means sign every page!")

Of most interest will be Home Office processing times...unfortunately, those seem to vary considerably. I'm told they tend to be shorter in the winter, even as low as 3-4 weeks, while the "summer crunch" can see queues stretching to 12-14 weeks. Note that an HSMP, once approved, does not "start the clock" with regard to the 2yr work window until you actually set foot in-country, which I believe can be anytime up to 6mo after approval. Therefore, there is little risk in starting the process ahead of time, e.g. as soon as you have 12 months of appropriate documentation assembled.